Issue 103
July 2013
Before he was UFC lightweight champion, ‘Little Evil’ had his first taste of pro defeat at the hands of a physics undergraduate
A 1999 submission defeat in Littleton, Colorado: future UFC lightweight champ Jens Pulver’s first professional loss. Officially, at least. Back then, MMA wasn’t so much about keeping score as just fighting. Nevertheless, his record has a first loss and it belongs to David Harris.
Meeting in the second round of the second-ever Bas Rutten Invitational tournament (no rounds, no time limits, winner takes $500), they took the evening’s ‘Fight of the Night’ by brawling back and forth for 11 minutes 57 seconds. Harris ended it with a figure-four ankle lock, newly learned after spotting it in a video of the previous Bas Rutten Invitational.
Today, having fought in Pride and challenged for WEC gold, Pulver is still scrapping. Harris isn’t. He said: “I was fighting some really high-level guys and if you don’t have the same passion they do you can get hurt. Plus I was finishing my degree. I was getting a double major in engineering physics and computer science.”
Now Harris is 33 years old and a software engineer living in Houston, Texas. Back then, he was a 19-year-old with an (officially) undefeated record and no clue who his foe was about to become.
You didn’t know anything about Jens before you fought him, but what were your impressions of him as the fight played out?
“I did definitely notice that he hit a lot harder than I have ever been hit before. Even up until now there are probably only a few guys I would say that I trained with that hit harder, and they were heavyweights.”
A few years after that loss Pulver went on to become UFC lightweight champion. How did it feel to watch his career develop?
“It was really exciting for me. Every time he won a fight, that was real good, I got really excited. I was a big fan of his for a long time. When I fought him, the guy who was the referee, John Perretti, was also the UFC’s matchmaker. So I think this might have been a way to scout out some people for him. I was asked at that show, after I fought Pulver, if I’d be interested in a UFC fight. I turned it down; I said no because I was still trying to get my schooling going. Plus the fight with Pulver was pretty tough so I had big knots all over my head and I was thinking, ‘I don’t know if this is exactly what I want to do forever.’ When the guy asked me that and I said, ‘Probably not, I don’t think it’d be for me,’ I remember thinking that no matter what decision I made there, I was going to have regrets. If I decided I’m just going to drop everything and focus on a fight career, I would definitely regret not being in school; and vice versa, if I decided I wouldn’t pursue my fight career as much as I could I’d probably regret it. But watching him go I did have those tinges of regret. ‘Man, maybe I could have done it. Maybe I could have fought at a higher level.’ But I’m happy where I’m at now. I don’t have any regrets.”
If you’d said yes, do you think you’d have been successful in the UFC?
“I think so. I don’t think I would have been a top contender but I think I could have been moderately successful.”
You’re a software engineer now and not as engrained in the sport as some former fighters. Are people surprised by your fighting past?
“Pretty much my whole life since I started fighting people have been very surprised. I have glasses, and when I started fighting I was going to school and I was taking a real geeky major. A lot of times before fights I would be doing quantum mechanics homework prior to the fight. In fact, after I fought Pulver, the Monday after I fought him, I had an organic chemistry test that I bombed and I blamed him for it; he knocked all my organic chemistry knowledge out of my head (laughs).”
Did you have any contact with Jens after?
“I did email him every so often. We’d email back and forth whenever he’d have a big fight. When he shattered John Lewis’ jaw (UFC 28) I emailed him. ‘Hey, man, keep winning; you’re making me look good.’”
